Oona goota Solo?

There are many things in this life that astound me. This may not surprise you if you spend more than 5 minutes of your day looking at the news or scrolling through Twitter. There are apparently monumental idiots absolutely everywhere; I fear they may be locked into some sort of terrifying breeding plan to produce the Kwisatz Haderach of imbeciles (the sleeper must awaken!) rather than just not having sense enough to take some sort of rudimentary, precautionary birth control past a Mars bar wrapper and a rubber band. Similarly, it's not just your average everyday naturally occurring stuff like why wasps exist other than to annoy literally everyone or what in the hell are moths made of, that they magically turn to dust when you punch their fuzzy little faces in? God damn I hate moths, furry little flapping bastards. No, I'm talking more in the vein of why do I need to be approved by a member of staff whenever I buy a can of Monster, how in the name of all that is holy do Facebook algorithms actually work and why anyone in their right mind would listen to the band Ghost? There is a fourth wonder of our modern age that I will return to momentarily but for now, dramatic tension. 

Solo is the latest instalment in the uninvited Star Wars stories section of Walt Disney Presents: Star Wars Episodes VII to infinity (recouping our investment). Not content with spewing forth the continuation of one of the most beloved Sci-Fi trilogies ever, we now get a series of origins, prequels and subplots to tide us over between the big boys. Rogue One came out all guns blazing and now we get to find out all about young Han Solo and his journey towards being the lovable scoundrel who would have died in Empire Strikes Back if Harrison Ford had his way and met a wholly unsatisfying cheap death at the hands of his own offspring 30 years later. Things is: I didn't hate it.

Don't get me wrong, I was fully expecting this to be a steaming pile of Bantha dung, but actually it wasn't as bad as the first trailer made it out to be. Don't get to attached to the warm and fuzzies, there is an awful lot wrong with it; I'm realising that new Star Wars movies have to be judged on a sliding scale. This is miles better than the prequels, less infuriating than the new trilogy and sits somewhere roughly alongside Rogue One as being not too offensive, but still not great.

As far as plots go, it's kind of a heist movie which at least briefly breaks sort of new territory for Star Wars and the lack of any real defining hero is interesting enough; this is a rogues gallery of ne'er-do-wells and gangsters and you're never quite sure who other than Han you're supposed to be rooting for. It isn't particularly cleverly done; there are a couple of telegraphed twists that don't really play out as well as they should because the set-up is rushed and the inevitable double-cross falls a touch flat. The real problem here, which was the same problem Rogue One and Force Awakens had, is that they're so desperate to remind you this is Star Wars, they forget to make the story compelling. Here, it's a case of trying to cram in as many references to the Han Solo we know and love it starts feeling like Ready Player One. Some of it we needed; how he met Chewbacca, how he gets the Falcon, the Kessel Run, that sort of thing. It just seems really awkwardly coincidental that all of these things happened not only on the same job, but his first ever job as an outlaw. It feels like they couldn't think of enough back story about each of those momentous events to warrant a film each (but I guarantee they thought about it) so it just becomes a checklist exercise of references to things Han said and did in the original. I get that it's one big fan service nod to us old bastards who know Episode IV line by line, but it just doesn't sit right; we don't need a line of exposition to explain why Han never calls Chewbacca by his full name. We don't need a scene to show us where Han got his DL-44 blaster from or the huge significance placed on the tiny gold dice that were nothing more than set dressing until the new films came along. We certainly don't need an overly dramatised exchange to find out where he got his surname from. It's a surname for Christ’s sake, nobody cares. Oh and apparently Han Solo single-handedly enabled the birth of the rebellion by stealing some rocket fuel. I'll just let that sink in.

Hats and capes off to Donald Glover though for a spot on Lando Calrissian. It's tough to be as cool as Billy Dee Williams, but he's nailed it here. There are yet more nods to the original in his dialogue, making bad deals and bemoaning mining colonies, but he just about pulls it off. Sadly along with him comes the absolute worst character yet to grace a Star Wars movie: L3-37 the Social Justice Warrior droid. Nothing about her as a character works. She has a weird crush on Lando, tries to empower a cage fighting robot, then kick starts a droid revolution. All well and good, but when Lando asks her what she wants and she replies "equal rights" it's just too much. Make a statement, by all means. We need strong female characters, droid or otherwise, but we don't need badly written cringe worthy social commentary shoved down our throats in the middle of a Star Wars film. I've never been glad to see a heroic character get shot to pieces in my life, but that was a blessing. 

There is a much bigger fail here though, one that took me some Internet research to work out. Obvious spoilers for a random cameo (look away now). There were a few veiled mentions of a higher power behind the Alabama Crimson Tide (or whatever the gangsters were called) so when the holoprojector sputters into life and the familiar horned skull of Darth Maul pops into view, it threw me a bit. Last I heard, he'd been offed in spectacular fashion by a young Obi Wan; does this mean Solo is concurrent with Phantom Menace? That would make Han nearly as old as Obi Wan which clearly wasn't right. Apparently though, in the Clone Wars and Rebels cartoons (that people swear by, but I couldn't watch more than 5 minutes of when I tried) Darth Maul comes back with mechanical legs, presumably funded by the Help for Imperial Heroes charity or by a Gofundme campaign and has a bunch of seedy underworld connections. Makes more sense in the time line, but it’s still random and carries very little weight; if you know the cartoons he dies in the end anyway so there's no drama there. If you don't know the cartoons, it's all just a bit confusing. Now that I think of it, he's probably only there to maintain the 'lightsabre ignited in every movie' streak they've got going, which he does for literally no reason whatsoever. 

So, I hear you frantically asking, what about Fourth Wonder of the Modern Age? Fear not faithful readers, I'd not forgotten (well I might have forgotten but it came to me in the end). Simply put: how does Emilia Clarke keep getting work? She's terrible. Seems like unless she's flanked by CGI dragons she's just awful. She might even be awful if she is, I don't watch Game of Thrones. Utterly forgettable, even with the big reveal at the end. Get thee back to Westeros.

When all's said and done, Solo turned out not the greatest, not the worst, just nestled squarely in the middle. Now we just have to wait and see if they ruin Boba Fett. Spoiler alert: they're totally going to ruin Boba Fett.